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comment by Templarrr (templarrr) · 2022-11-22T15:28:33.041Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
As a person both in Ukraine right now AND involved in ML/AI development (in my case these are 2 completely disconnected facts) - you overestimate the capabilities and benefits of using an AI vs current manual mode. There are so many different problems with this that I'm honestly in a pickle just deciding which order to list them :)
- IFF - no existing AI (or human, for that matter) can distinguish russian from ukrainian just by looks. And Z and V and O are not always an indicator as well, just like not always they are easy to recognize given quality of picture of UAV in use.
- Not all shots should be taken - this is war, tactics is involved, sometimes it's necessary to skip some even valid targets for the window of opportunity for the better ones.
- Cost of mistake, both modes - ignoring the enemy or killing friendlies...
etc etc etc
Replies from: derpherpize↑ comment by Lao Mein (derpherpize) · 2022-11-22T15:34:48.137Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
What about strikes into staging/rear areas though? You can just set grid coordinates a few km deep into enemy territory, minimizing risk of friendly fire. Are there currently a shortage of UAV operators? While I'm sure that for now human control can give higher performance, the idea with automation is massive scaling - instead of a few hundred UAVs operating at a time, each controlled by an operator, you can have tens of thousands of autonomous UAVs operating at the same time, needing human interaction only during resupply.
Replies from: templarrr↑ comment by Templarrr (templarrr) · 2022-11-22T15:53:54.048Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
And now you're overestimating the quality and quantity of the equipment Ukraine has :) Western countries love to make a big deal of all the "huge help" they provide but it's honestly a drop in an ocean. These are amazing systems but most of them counts in a single or double digits over thousands of kilometers of frontline.
Most UAV actually in use by UAF is jury-rigged commercial drones, and for them "fly many kilometers behind the enemy line to hit something there" is simply not an option. There are systems capable of that - but with those the bottleneck to solve is their availability, not human factor that can be solved by automation.
Replies from: derpherpize↑ comment by Lao Mein (derpherpize) · 2022-11-22T16:04:48.145Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Hun, I didn't know that. I'd expected that fundraisers would be more common in the Western intellectual sphere if that were the case. Can you recommend a charity for those who want to donate? Also, are the ones where they write a custom message on a grenade before it gets dropped on Russians legit?
Replies from: templarrr, templarrr↑ comment by Templarrr (templarrr) · 2022-11-22T16:52:27.547Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Another option that most ukrainians including me has chosen - find a military unit (usually you somehow personally connected with - for me it's one TDF with my former college and one artillery unit with my classmate) and try to provide them with what they need - and most of the time the things most required are not "swarm of AI-controlled murder bots" but like... boots. Helmets. Means of transportation, night goggles etc
↑ comment by Templarrr (templarrr) · 2022-11-22T16:35:49.965Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
United24 is an official fundraiser with supervision of the government of Ukraine, so that one is probably the most efficient bet that your money will be used for the right cause. Everything else - case-by-case ) some "write a custom message" fundraisers are legit - I saw the results. Some others are probably scam or even worse - Russian troll farms are infamous for creating copycats and imitations to discredit systems they oppose.
I'd expected that fundraisers would be more common in the Western intellectual sphere if that were the case
You can't easily buy systems like that as a private person for all kind of different "legal reasons". And even when you somehow achieve that - every single customs office on the way will give the person trying to bring those to Ukraine all kinds of hell. Weapons are straight out of the way and even systems of "double" use can be problematic. That's why if we want to see high-tech military grade systems - donating to United24 is the way, all the civil fundraisers can realistically get to the front are glorified quadcopters with a hook.
comment by ChristianKl · 2022-11-22T18:53:59.962Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Early in the war, there was a story that using drones to drop grenades is happening.
comment by Dagon · 2022-11-22T16:09:06.421Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
[Note: I'm an AGI skeptic, at least compared to the median LW poster. I expect decades of improving tool-AI that never quite reaches human levels of out-of-domain judgement and exception handling. ]
There's really not much advantage to pure automation over AI-assisted humans (and as they get more advanced, human-oversight of AI). And there's a lot of downsides, especially around adversarial manipulation of environment and ECM/capture to turn weapons against their own side. The very things that make self-contained AI weapons better than remote pilots (or at least remote weapons-unlock) are the things that make it terrifying to the users, not just the targets.
There's an interesting parallel to landmines - they're just too indiscriminate to be terribly effective on today's battlefields. AI drones don't have the problem of extending danger past the conflict (unless they do), but there's a LONG way before they're better than humans at deciding whether to take the shot.
comment by bokov (bokov-1) · 2022-11-23T19:20:45.464Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It's ironic that you're so excited about autonomous weapons but the first video you posted is a dramatic depiction created by a YouTube account called "Stop Autonomous Weapons".
I think the idea of this video was to scare the public by how powerful, precise, and possibly opaque these weapons are.
But I agree with you-- ethical or not, groups that limit their use of these weapons will be at a disadvantage against groups that do not. That's a microcosm of the whole AI regulatory problem right there.